In “Call for Honesty, Part 1” the focus was on a call for honesty among women. If you haven’t already done so, check out http://naturallyimpressivethoughts.blogspot.com/2010/06/call-for-honesty-part-1.html and read my call for honesty and my delivery of an honest outlook on my life and the choices I have made.
Honesty among women is one thing. It is specific to the way that women choose to deal with other women who are their peers. That way of relating about our lives, the choices we make and the impact those choices have on our own happiness has put some of us on opposite sides of the fence and fostered adversarial relationships among women who may not walk in or understand the shoes of another woman. In peer relationships, it is much easier to choose women who sit on the same (or close enough) side of the fence as you do, thereby relieving the differences. However in relationship between women, the choice may not be there.
Mothers, Grandmothers, Aunts, Sisters, Cousins and Godmothers are all relationships that exist between women. When those defined roles exist, the call for honesty about life choices becomes that much more magnified. And when the truth isn’t being shared, the impact can be frightening and further foster the lack of honesty among women outside this group. By now you know my story, my mother died when I was 19. And although I was only 19, we had lots of talks about the future, what it meant to be a woman and the types of choices a woman will have to make. As many conversations as I know I missed with her, one that is high on that list is the conversation about why she made some of the choices that she made. My mother was an honest woman, sometimes brutally honest. So I am sure that she would have told me just why she decided to marry my father at 19 and have two children before the age of 27. But not every mother is like that, not every Aunt is truthful, not every sister is forthcoming. Furthermore, some of these women in our lives are so bitter from the result of their own choices that they force opposing choices down the throats of the young or even worse, encourage the young to make the same mistakes in order to prevent them from being better or happier. In another act of good faith, I want to share my honest issue with the lack of honesty between women:
Honestly, I was told I could have it all. That is not true. That pisses me off daily. I understand why my mother told me I could have it all, unfortunately her version of “all” isn’t clear to me. So I can’t tell if she was just telling me what she thought I needed to hear or what she actually believed based on her personal definition of “all”.
Honestly, I watched the older generation of women in my family, the “great/grand” group of women who seemed to be defined by their home lives and in some cases, unhappy. My Grandmother wasn’t very open with me about how she felt about her life choices (if they were even choices) and she walked a very hard line about what it meant to be a woman. I knew this not because of any statements she made to me about what she wanted my future to be (I don’t think she really thought about what my future would be, honestly) but by the statements she made about other women and their choices. She was very verbal and vocal about her displeasure with women who didn’t have children, had never been married or divorced their husbands. To this day I can’t figure out if it was because she held strong convictions about the institution of marriage and children or because she was a tad envious of the freedom those women possessed.
Honestly, while I knew as a child the message my Grandmother was pumping was in direct contradiction to the message I was getting at home, the message was still heard. And between women, the message is always heard whether it is intentional or not. Therefore, what is said to, among and around a young woman by the women in her life must be handled with care and more importantly honesty. I would have understood my Grandmother a lot more had she explained her life choices to me. From what my mother had a chance to tell me, I could respect some of the decisions she made as a mother better because she was honest about why she made them.
Honestly, my mother’s message to me about the decisions I should make as a woman were not all unbiased. She had been married young, so she made marriage young seem unnecessary by telling us we could wait. She was divorced by the time she was 30 and thrown into single motherhood. So she didn’t see a need for us to rush into marriage. The message was received and noted. However, so was the message that marriage and kids were the defining roles of a woman (via Grandma) and the message that independence was the best thing a woman could have (via Aunt Goldie). Only Aunt Goldie spent a lot of time explaining all her choices and why she was encouraging us to make certain choices. The irony of it is that out of this group of women, Aunt Goldie was the only one who was never a mother. Aunt Goldie was in the same age range as Grandma. Although from the same generation their lives couldn't have been more different and therefore their outlook on their own lives and hope for my life landed on two opposite ends of the spectrum.
When you grow up and become a woman, not only do you begin to question the decisions you will make with your own life but you begin to question those of the women around you. You wonder if your mother was truly happy as a stay at home mom or did she just feel it was best for you. You begin to wonder if your mother stayed married to your father because she didn’t want to be alone or because she loved him more than anything in the world. You wonder how much your Auntie really meant it when she said she didnt need a man. You begin to ask questions of these women who influenced your decisions, one way or another and often what you find on the other end of the question is a less than forthcoming, straight up answer. Why is that? Why is it so hard for women to be honest within the female sector of the family? Where is the honesty in the family structure about what really makes us happy, why we really did or did not have children, what we really wanted out of life and where we found the greatest disappointment? I often wonder why mothers, grandmothers, aunts and cousins don't tell their truth about motherhood or lack thereof. I want to know what they really felt about working outside the home, marriage, relationships and life. But the honesty isn’t always there. Maybe it’s more fear of judgment or maybe one woman just doesn’t have the courage to look a young girl in the face and tell her all the things that she will learn when she is a bit older. Maybe between women, we seek to spare our younger group and allow them to live in their own fantasy, whatever that may be. But does that blind approach help or hurt a young woman as she begins to make major decisions with her life, some of which are permanent? Or is part of the growth from girl to woman learning about these decisions on your own along the way?
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